Two ESL Teachers'Cognition and Practice of Providing Written Corrective Feedback

Peihong Cao

School of Foreign Languages,Northeast Normal University,Changchun,China

Email:359064786@qq.com

Chun Cui

Office of International Cooperation&Exchange,Jilin Agricultural University,Changchun,China

Email:64453995@qq.com

[Abstract] Written Corrective Feedback is fundamental to interactions between teachers and students and teacher's cognition needs to be probed to understand their teaching.This study aimed to explore two ESL teachers'WCF cognition and practice and the relationship between them through interview and examination of feedback responses on students'writing.The interview data was analyzed by using Hycner's 15 steps and the feedback responses by Ellis's typology of WCF types and feedback focus.Findings manifest that differences exist between teachers' WCF perceptions and practice and administrators should consider employing multiple strategies to better equip teachers of writing to provide feedback.

[Keywords] ESL writing;written corrective feedback;cognition and practice

Introduction

Feedback in writing classes is fundamental to interactions between teachers and students about the students'writing and to help students further improve their writing.One of the greatest challenges that instructor of English writing(ESL teachers in particular)face is to provide feedback(Ferris,2007).Despite the documentation of the facilitative role of written corrective feedback(WCF)by Lyster and Saito(2010)and Mackey and Goo(2007),many teachers are not convinced that WCF is efficient(Guénette&Lyster,2013).Though unconvinced of the efficiency of WCF,teachers still believe that they should correct students'grammatical errors(Guénette&Lyster,2013).

Providing WCF can be trying and frustrating to teachers because it is a time-consuming task (Ferris,2007;Jiang&Zeng,2011).It can also be challenging to teachers who are not well trained(Tusi,1996)or lack metalinguistic awareness of complex linguistic notions (e.g.Guénette &Lyster,2013).Even so,providing WCF is a frequent practice in the writing classes and a booming research focus.Since exploring teachers' cognition (e.g.,thoughts,beliefs and knowledge)aids one to understand teachers and their practice(Borg,2006),scholars abroad have explored teachers' beliefs,guiding principles,challenges,and practices (Diab,2005;Jodaie &Farrokhi,2012;Junqueira &Kim,2013;Junqueira &Payant,2015;Min,2013).Findings reveal that gap exists between teachers' belief and practice,teacher's practice improves after attending in-service teacher education program(Tsui,1996),and teacher candidates need to be equipped with specialized training concerning providing WCF(Guénette&Lyster,2013).

Limited domestic literature has explored teachers' cognition and practice (Lee,1998,2008,2009;Zhao,2010;Liu,2013;Mao&Crosthwaite,2019;Niu&Zhang,2018;Yang,2013).The comparison studies manifest that the foreign teacher provided more feedback than the Chinese ESL teacher (Zhao,2010) and the foreign teachers provided feedback on the basis of the paper itself by employing more euphemisms and focusing more on content (Liu,2013).The studies on secondary ESL teachers'belief and practice reveal a gap existed:the teachers regarded discourse coherence essential,though in actual practice,they emphasized more on grammar in their evaluation (Lee,1998) and ten salient mismatches existed between teachers' beliefs and practice and WCF was mainly error-focused and occurred in single-draft classrooms(Lee,2009).Moreover,scholars find that university ESL teachers incline to overuse negative feedback(Niu&Zhang,2018;Yang,2013)and to address local errors more than holistic errors by adopting direct feedback(Mao&Crosthwaite,2019).

The available literature manifests the gap between one's belief and practice,teachers' practice tendencies,and the necessity of training.However,research on ESL teachers' knowledge,training and experience with receiving and providing WCF remains rare.Moreover,WCF cognition and practice of teachers teaching non-English major postgraduates and experienced teachers with no experience teaching writing as a separate course are rarer.Therefore,this current study will explore the rarely researched teachers' WCF cognition and practice to gain insight into these two aspects,to inform curriculum and to encourage more studies to be carried out with ESL teachers teaching at different levels.The following three questions are to be explored:

1.What knowledge of and experiences with corrective feedback does the ESL teacher have?

2.How does the ESL teacher employ and adapt corrective feedback with ESL students in the classrooms?

3.What is the connection between a teacher's knowledge of and experience with and the use of written corrective feedback?

Methodology

This case study adopted interview of two participants and examination of their feedback responses provided on students' compositions to collect data.The two-dimensional sources of data were collected to improve the validity of data (Creswell,2014).The data were collected in the fall semester of 2016 after gaining both participants' and their students'permission.

The Participants

The participants under research are currently teachers of English at a normal university in the northeastern part of China.Participant One has been teaching since 1996,with rich experience in teaching curriculum and pedagogy but no experience in teaching writing and it is the first time she taught writing as a separate course to English major sophomores.

Participant Two,with 27-year experience of teaching and five-year experience of teaching writing as a separate course,is currently teaching writing to non-English major postgraduates.The two participants,with varied teaching experiences and student groups,are meaningful candidates as these two groups of participants have rarely been studied.

Data Collection Techniques

Semi-structured,face-to-face,one-on-one interviews on a voluntary basis were firstly conducted to document participants' general perceptions of training in,experience with,and employment of providing WCF.Examination of feedback responses on students'writing assignments was collected to explore participants'practice of providing WCF.Students'permission was gained and their confidentiality and anonymity were addressed through storing the files in a secure place and giving students identity numbers.Integrating interview data and the practice data enables one to perceive the relationship between their cognition and practice of providing WCF.

Data Analysis and Categorization Scheme

The interview data were recorded on a digital device on a 30-minute sitting and then transcribed,coded,and analyzed according to Hycner's(1985)15 steps,permitting the analysis to be systematic and verifiable(Krueger,2009).

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The feedback responses were analyzed in accordance with the feedback types documented by Ellis(2009)—direct CF,indirect CF(indicating+locating the error;indication only),metalinguistic feedback(error code;commenting or questioning),focused feedback and unfocused feedback,electronic CF(by using electronic software programs)and reformulation(rewrite student's text to make the piece sound native-like).

The feedback focus was categorized into three aspects on the basis of previous research (Montgomery &Baker,2007;Niu&Zhang,2018;Yang,2013).Feedback on content incorporated unclear meaning and the paper in general(e.g.,writing strategies,story and thesis).Feedback on organization targeted paragraph (e.g.,organization,structure and development)and sentence(e.g.,topic~,supporting~,and concluding~).Feedback on language included vocabulary (word spelling,usage,and choice;phrases),sentences (e.g.,structure,comma splice,conciseness and expression),grammar(e.g.,the plural/singular form of word,personal pronoun agreement,adjective possessive pronoun,and tense),and mechanics (e.g.,handwriting,the layout of paragraph,punctuation,space between sentences or words,alignment).Regarding the feedback calculation,one feedback response concerning any aspect was counted once.

Results

Result on ESL Teachers'Knowledge and Experiences with WCF

With Regard to the knowledge of and experience the ESL teachers possess,Participant One knew indirect feedback the best and mastered it through textbook while Participant Two was more familiar with indirect CF (indicating and locating the error in particular),metalinguistic feedback(providing brief grammatical descriptions)and electronic feedback.Participant Two learned these types mainly from textbooks,academic journals and previous study.Both participants read the articles concerning WCF occasionally,and they regarded the articles useful.

Regarding their previous experience concerning receiving WCF during university,Participant One could not recall having received feedback during undergraduate study and she gained one or two comments on the idea of the weekly essays during postgraduate study.Participant Two had experiences of receiving feedback for two years provided by a foreign teacher who employed direct CF,indirect CF and metalinguistic feedback.Participant Two treated the feedback received seriously and regarded these forms of feedback more useful to improve grammatical accuracy rather than content.

With regard to their training,confidence and practice of providing WCF,Participant One lacked confidence because she was not offered any pre-service or in-service training.She preferred indirect feedback and unfocused feedback and would like to prioritize content and organization.She intended to provide feedback on all students' weekly journal entries.Participant Two was not offered any training either,but he had confidence in providing CF by favoring indirect CF for reckoning this type encouraged students to solve the errors more by themselves.He believed to prioritize students' content and the paragraph structure on students' single-draft assignments.He encountered challenges when providing WCF for about 160 students each semester,each of whom needed to hand in two-to-three writing assignments and one final examination paper.Non-English major postgraduates' low motivation made Participant Two doubt the feedback effect provided for the students.

Results of Participants'Practice of WCF

The WCF responses on 40 sophomores'journal entries provided by Participant One and those on 28 postgraduates'essays provided by Participant Two were collected,recorded,sorted and analyzed by feedback amount,type and focus.Participant One provided 117 responses,on average about three responses for each student while Participant Two provided 216 responses,on average about 7.7 responses for each student.Participant One employed four feedback types in the order of metalinguistic feedback (74,63.2%),indirect feedback (29,24.8%);reformulation (9,7.7%)and direct CF(5,4.3%).Participant Two adopted three feedback types with the order of direct CF(103,47.7%)metalinguistic feedback (69,31.9%) and indirect feedback (44,20.4%).The order of feedback focus for Participant One went from language,to organization and content(49.5%,39.3%vs.9.4%)while that for Participant Two was language(149,70%),content(36,16.7%)and organization(31,14.3%).

Regarding indirect feedback,Participant One adopted question marks (23.1%) and underlining (1.7%).The question mark was employed to question word choices,content,grammar and conciseness,as well as insertion of sentences (10.3%,6.8%,3.4%,2.6%).However,Participant Two employed question mark solely to target content (unclear meaning,21,9.7%) and language (23,10.6%).The most frequently addressed linguistic errors were misuse of tense(6.5%),punctuation(2.8%),and third person singular(1.4%).

Participant One also employed reformulation to rewrite students' sentences (7.7%) and direct feedback to address vocabulary (3.4%) and grammar (0.8%).Contrary to Participant One,Participant Two adopted direct insertion,deletion and correction,with correction being the most frequently employed (74,35%).All direct feedback targeted students' language,out of which vocabulary accounted for the most (23.1%),followed by grammar (16.7%—tense,16.2%;subject and verb agreement,0.5%),and mechanics (6.9%—punctuation,3.7%;space between sentences/words,3.2%).

Results on Relationship Between Cognition and Practice of WCF

Gap existed between the participants' cognition and practice.Participant One intended to provide feedback on all students' writing assignments by prioritizing content and organization.But she provided feedback on only one of students'journal entries due to time and energy constraint,and language gained the most amount of feedback.Participant One reported preferring for indirect CF,but in actual practice,she employed metalinguistic feedback the most,exceeding one-third of the entire feedback amount.Participant Two reported to prefer indirect feedback,but he employed direct feedback the most,more than metalinguistic feedback and indirect feedback combined.Moreover,Participant Two believed to prefer to prioritize content and organization;however,about 70% of his feedback responses targeted linguistic errors.

Discussion

This study finds some similarities between these two participants.First,onsite training was lacking for both participants.Second,their unfocused feedback targeted errors comprehensively,which was similar to the EFL teachers who marked grammatical errors in a comprehensive manner (Jodaie &Farrokhi,2012).Third,inconsistency existed among the feedback types adopted to target the same error types.Participant One employed direct CF,indirect CF and metalinguistic CF(calling students'attention to it)to address word choices.Participant Two adopted direct feedback,indirect feedback and metalinguistic feedback to address students'past tense.Fourth,inconsistency existed between participants' perception and practice,similar to the findings of Junqueira and Payant (2015) and Lee (1998;2009).

Conclusion

This current study explores and describes the current state of ESL teachers' knowledge of,experience with,training in and practice of WCF.Although findings suggest that ESL teachers possessed certain knowledge concerning WCF and provided different varying numbers of feedback types to target varied writing aspects,teachers were not very well trained or had been provided with chances to be equipped with necessary skills or further improve their cognition and practice of providing feedback.Therefore,it is imperative that administrators explore multiple means and strategies that help equip the teachers of writing to teach and provide feedback in a more effective and efficient manner.This study also demonstrates that ESL teachers of writing need to shadow experienced teachers of writing and be offered constant onsite training opportunities (e.g.,seminars,conferences) to improve a teacher's competence in a comprehensive manner.

Acknowledgments

This paper is the phased research achievement of the Education Research Project "College English Teachers'Cognition and Practice of Written Feedbackw of the Department of Education of Jilin Province(JJKH20190306SK)."